Monday, March 20, 2017

Silliness out of Boulder

Yes, I know I'm being redundant here, but this story just floors me. Apparently, when lecturing in a legal ethics class, Neil Gorsuch may have pointed out that it can be seen as unethical for a motherhood-minded lawyer to obtain a job with maternity leave benefits for the sake of....maintaining income while growing her family, especially when she has significant student loans.

In response, a former law student claims that this somehow discounts the worth of women in the workforce....as if pointing to the cost of maternity leave is equivalent to saying women shouldn't work at all. The issue is compounded by a claim that Gorsuch pointed out that female lawyers have twice the divorce rate of male lawyers.

Now, on the planet I inhabit, warning people about the perils of their chosen profession--and I did quickly find a study from the ABA that said 50% more female lawyers were divorced than their male counterparts--would ordinarily be seen as a "service", not a "harm." Apparently, however, the sun shines a different color in the People's Republic of Boulder.